The present disclosure relates to image processing apparatuses and image processing methods and particularly relates to an OCR (optical character recognition) processing technique for extracting characters from image data.
There is known a technique for performing OCR processing on a specified area, not the whole, of image data to extract characters presented in the specified area. Using the OCR processing, the user can extract desired characters by specifying a desired area.
An example of a method for specifying an area where OCR processing is to be performed is a method in which the user places a mark on a desired area of a document with a marker pen. The area where OCR processing is to be performed can be specified by scanning the marked document and analyzing image data generated by the scanning of the document to identify a marked portion of the document. According to this technique, the user can specify the area where OCR processing is to be performed by an intuitive and simple operation of placing a mark on the document by hand.